In preparation for the Publishing Institute, I need to read most of the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Of course we have to read the 16th, I thought, can’t use the 15th, the one I already have. The one I bought not too long ago thinking it would be with me forever (even though I really knew better, even at the time).

In a serious blindness on my part, I hadn’t known that Chicago published the 16th edition until my boss at my internship gave me her Chicago online login and informed me that the 16th edition was on there, but for now we’d go with what we already had on our style sheet, which was 15th edition. I wondered how much could actually changed in order for Chicago to feel they had to put out a new edition. I’m tempted to examine the 15th and 16th side by side, now that I have both.

Back to reading for the Institute. It’s basically the entire manual, really. Only a couple hundred pages of the behemoth book are being left out. And it makes me wonder how much of what is in that book I will actually know. How much of what I read will be a refresher of information I’ve already learned at some point in my education. I worry that I won’t know enough and I’ll have to scramble to memorize enough of everything so I appear competent when I arrive in Denver.

It’s frightening. Intimidating. And it’s moments like this when I feel so, so small.